Malta has climbed two places and now ranks 24th in the World Economic Forum’s global travel and tourism competitive index, beating many of its Mediter-ranean competitors.
The island ranks two places ahead of northern neighbours Italy, five above Cyprus, eight above Greece and 22 above Turkey.
Switzerland, Germany and Austria took the top three positions. In Europe, Malta placed 17th overall.
Northern European countries fared much better than those in the south, with Spain (fourth) and France (seventh) the only countries with Mediterranean coastlines to make among the global top 20.
Britain, the second most popular destination for Maltese tourists, ranked fifth.
Organised by the World Economic Forum, an independent grouping of business, political and academic leaders, the index aims to measure the factors and policies that develop a country’s travel and tourism sectors.
In terms of the assessment criteria, Malta ranked 15th in the world overall for tourism regulatory framework, 14th for business environment and infrastructure and 49th for human, cultural and natural resources.
A large number of factors and variables were assessed within these broad categories to finalise the overall rankings.
Breaking the results down further, Malta was rated highly for prioritising travel and tourism (sixth) and safety and security (15th).
In security, Malta was let down somewhat by the reliability of the police and ranked 42nd, one place above Botswana.
It also fared poorly in policy rules and regulations (63rd) and environmental sustainability (48th).
The island ranked 55th in terms of enforcement of environmental regulations, one place below Azerbaijan.
And while it placed 15th for tourism infrastructure, the island ranked a lowly 90th for price competitiveness.
Its worst placing was for natural resources, where it ranked 115th.
Data was collated from the World Economic Forum’s annual executive opinion survey and quantitative data from publicly available sources, international organisations and travel and tourism institutions and experts.
In the 2011 index, Malta ranked 26th overall.